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F3-2133C10D-16GXM, Biostar TZ68A+ with intel 2550K

Too bad I didn't look this up before I bought the kit or I would have realized that I probably should have gotten 1866 memory with faster timings.

As discussed in the other thread, the RFC timing only goes up to 255 on this motherboard which seems to disallow 2133 speeds at all.

Currently I'm running 2x8GB at 1866 9-10-10-10-24 1T. I am able to boot at 1866 8-10-10-10-24 1T, pass a mem test, but am unstable in real world use. As for the rest of the timings I'm using what the gentlemen in the previously posted thread used for his memory on the same board.

There's no data I can find that reccomends timings for this memory at speeds between SPD and XMP. My main question is what settings might I tighten to get a little more of a delta between my old kit and my new, or should I just forget about it?

There is no universal correct settings for any kit at a given memory ratio. While for some kits it is possible to make educated guesses based on their specs and the ICs possibly used on them, the actual scaling can still vary.

So your 9-10-10-24 1T setting did pass stability testing?

Once you found a stable setting as a starting point, you could try to tighten the timings up one after another. But the performance gains won't be huge and it can take a lot of time you are not used to tinkering with memory settings. Other than that when tightening timings keep in mind that you might have to raise memory voltage at some point to re-stabilise your system.

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In fact I've already begun tightening up timings. I'm now at 9-10-9-24 and pushed my tRFC down to 220. I'm perfectly willing to up the voltage a bit as well. In hopes of doing less straight up trial and error, are any of the timings I'm at (I'm aligned with the other thread's results except for tFAW) particularly conservative or highly influential to speed?

I guess this topic is also a bit of a whine fest, I should have gotten 1866 memory with better timings, since it seems like this kit is more about mhz than timings. I see there are 8-8-8-24 kits out there at 1866.

I am getting a chance to go in depth a bit more on how memory works though, which is nice. XMP always did the job for me and I haven't worried about it in the past.

I'm not sure if this is an interesting result or not, but check this out.

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Hmm.. Just tried your settings. No joy, can't even get it to post at 2133. It'll power cycle itself a few times, then drop the bios down to defaults. Silicon lottery I guess. I'll probably just try to attack timings one at a time and see how I do.

I guess this topic is also a bit of a whine fest, I should have gotten 1866 memory with better timings, since it seems like this kit is more about mhz than timings. I see there are 8-8-8-24 kits out there at 1866.

Please consider that higher density memory usually doesn't do as well with tight timings compared to lower density kits. While there were 2x2GB kits with timings of 1866 7-8-7 available at some time, you won't find anything like that amongst 2x8GB kits.

I'm not sure how important these Aida64 numbers are, but my latency tops the benchmark list while the memory speed seems to be more along expected lines. Does this mean anything?

R/W/C looks alright, latency is a bit high but i would have to see your full timings including the tertiaries to comment on how to improve that. Also if there was other software running while benching, that can also impact latency measurement.

Hmm.. Just tried your settings. No joy, can't even get it to post at 2133. It'll power cycle itself a few times, then drop the bios down to defaults. Silicon lottery I guess. I'll probably just try to attack timings one at a time and see how I do.

Apart from the tRFC limit, i don't think it would be a memory problem, probably just weak memory training on the MB side. You might have to go full manual to hit DDR3-2133 including sub-timings and system voltages (VCCSA, VCCIO).

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Hmm.. Just tried your settings. No joy, can't even get it to post at 2133. It'll power cycle itself a few times, then drop the bios down to defaults. Silicon lottery I guess. I'll probably just try to attack timings one at a time and see how I do.

Thanks for dropping in!

Interesting that I too could not get it to work. Not sure what I did to get it to work, but I do know I did not give up and ended up with the settings I posted. I ran AIDA64 Trial version and the Read memory is 30801 MB/s, Write Memory is 32714 MB/s, Copy Memory is 30976 MB/s, Latency is 48.2 ns. Looks like if you can get it to run at 2133 you would get higher readings. Loosen the timings and keep trying...Good Luck.

I have my RAM voltage set to 1.65 but Aida64 is insisting that it is 1.5. "Open Hardware Monitor" is reporting an unammed voltage at 1.62 which could be my memory. I'm going to restart, drop the voltage and amend this post with the results.

edit: dropped RAM voltage down to 1.6 in BIOS. Open Hardware Monitor reports the same voltage at 1.57 which is the .03 less than the set target, which is consistent with the first reading.

Save your stable settings to USB beforehand, if that's possible. Otherwise pen and paper will have to do. If you go too tight on the wrong timing, your system might no longer be able to POST and you would then have to clear CMOS.

HWInfo64 should be able to read any voltages and you can rename, hide, rearrange them in the sensor panel as well.

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What Bios version are you using? I have Z68BF709.BST date 7/9/12 installed. If you are not using this bios you might consider upgrading to this latest bios, it is the most recent. Also I do know that loosening the timings too much will not work either, you have to find the right balance.

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Hmm, not sure what is causing you so much trouble, but I'm not so sure it is the silicon lottery as you have said. Sounds so much like I went through back when I had posted my original thread that you are going through now. Unfortunately I did not document what I did to get it to work and all I really can do is suggest you make sure your settings are the same as mine. I also wonder if there might be other settings elsewhere in the bios that are not on the page I took pictures of and posted that could be preventing it from booting when you change it to 2133 manually. I will have to think on this. For now just would like to verify you have Z68BF709.BST date 7/9/12 bios installed? The XMP settings do not work BTW, that was the first thing I tried after I flashed the bios.

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Hello! It's been a long time. Thought I'd update this for anyone else using this memory.

After updating the BIOS I started having some real bad instability issues. This was with the memory, seemingly at any speed. I set it to very relaxed timings @1866. Weeks later I figured out it was MSI afterburner and/or my video card settings causing issues. Updating the BIOS must have soured something on that end.

Once was sure the system was 100 percent stable I started playing with the memory again. I got it to boot at 2133 ONCE, but after that I couldn't convince Windows to boot. It would have trouble reading the OS into memory and dump me into recovery mode. So back to 1866 I went.

However, in the last couple weeks I have been getting my settings very aggressive at this speed including a CL at 8.

I'll keep pushing it over the next days and post my complete timings for others' reference.

I'm finally pretty satisfied with getting this memory as even though I'm not hitting 2133mhz, I am getting slightly better timings than I was with my 1600mhz kit. Thanks for the help. I'll update later!

Edit:
I am in fact running at the same BIOS version as mentioned in the thread
This BIOS does maintain configuration save slots over an upgrade